Ancient Chinese curse: may you live in interesting times. This web site is my attempt to document, from my perspective, these "interesting times".

Tuesday, October 26, 2004

Security?

Josh
has more. This time a transcript of an interview with an MSNBC embed, Lai
Ling Jew, who was part of the group that some claim said that the explosives
were already gone by April 10th.

Amy Rorbach: Was there a search at all underway or was, did a search ensue
for explosives once you got there during that 24-hour period?

Lai Ling Jew: No. There wasn't a search. The mission that the brigade
had was to get to Baghdad. That was more of a pit stop there for us. And, you
know, the searching, I mean certainly some of the soldiers head off on their
own, looked through the bunkers just to look at the vast amount of ordnance
lying around. But as far as we could tell, there was no move to secure the
weapons, nothing to keep looters away. But there was – at that point the
roads were shut off. So it would have been very difficult, I believe, for the
looters to get there.

Josh chose to emphasize the first part of Jew's statement. But I think the
second part is equally compelling since she says that she saw no attempt to
secure the facility against looters. She throws in the comment that it would
have been difficult for the looters to get there. But she can only report on
what she saw in one 24 hour period. She doesn't know what happened after her
group left.

This is the thrust of my previous post on this topic: did the administration,
because of incompetent planning, fail to secure the facility and prevent the
subsequent looting of those dangerous munitions?